Juan Cole
A female suicide bomber targeted Shiite pilgrims south of Baghdad on Thursday, killing at least 26 and wounding 75. Pilgrims are streaming to the holy city of Najaf in honor of the anniversary of the birth of the hidden 12th Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi, the Shiite messiah who many Iraqi Shiites believe will soon come to restore justice to the world.
Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports in Arabic that, as Iraqi deputy premier Barham Salih visits Tehran, the Iraqis are floating a proposal for a regional security network that would include Iraq, Iran, Turkey and some Arab countries.
You just compare this little paragraph and the information in it to US White House briefings and much of the mass media coverage of Iraq, and it is like Alice through the Looking Glass.
John Tirman questions the GOP's victory narrative about Iraq.
It is a measure of the Orwellian state of the US media and politics that he should have to bother. I mean, the place is a burned out hulk where hundreds die every month in political violence, where armed militias are ubiquitous, where nearly 5 million people remain displaced from their homes, where you have unemployment rates of 50% in some major cities, and where pro-Iranian Shiite fundamentalists face off against Sunni Arab nationalists and Salafis and Kurdish separatists. If this is a success, I'd hate to see a failure...............................
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